Godzilla: Clash of the Titans
by smacks
Summary: The world has slowly learned to adapt to the presence of deadly, giant monsters roaming about. Now, as dark forces begin to emerge from the black expanse of outer space, they may have to rely on those monsters to survive! Human characters are all OC, monsters are from throughout the history of Toho and the Godzilla franchise (and as many will appear as we can fit). Enjoy!
1. Chapter 1

The muffled whir of the screws moving the submarine along seemed to get louder when Martin Sanchez lay his head down. He would stretch out in a borrowed cot, shift around, give up on getting comfortable, sit back up, then repeat the process over and over. It had only been two hours. He couldn't sleep, he couldn't think above the sounds of machinery, and there was no place in the sub, at least none he had access to, which didn't trigger a claustrophobia he didn't think had been an issue since he was a child.

"Need a valium?"

"Huh?!" Martin shot up. Had he been a few inches taller, he would have banged his head on the ceiling. When he'd last laid down, he had been alone in the sleeping quarters. The stranger looked vaguely familiar. Martin hadn't made an effort to socialize at the naval base in Oahu that morning. He had no idea what he would have said to any of the military personnel and the people he'd assumed to be scientists, so he kept to himself as best as he could.

"You look anxious," the stranger said. He was sitting on a cot on the other side of the small room, a bag of candy in one hand. The other was currently rifling through the bag, presumably trying to search by feel for something in his favorite color. "I don't blame you, first time in one of these things can be a little nerve-wracking, right?"

"Who are you?" Martin asked, rubbing his temples as he realized he wasn't going to get any sleep on this trip.

"Errol Smith," the stranger answered, removing the hand fishing for candy and extending it.

"That what that's for?" Martin pointed to a badge hanging from his new bunkmate's breast-pocket. There was a picture this Errol Smith character with a toothy grin, and a large orange "E" next to it.

"You've got one, too," Errol said, keeping his hand extended for an awkward moment before Martin took it and shook.

"Mine doesn't have an initial on it," Martin replied, producing his badge. "Got this 'W' on it. For 'witness.'"

"So your name isn't Walter or anything?" Smith chuckled. "That's a shame, we could have confused everybody."

Martin shook his head, and rubbed his temples again. The presence of another person in the bunk was exacerbating his claustrophobia.

"I was serious about the valium," Smith said. "Buzz down to sick bay, they'll hook you right up. First time I had to ride this thing it got me through the trip. It's suicide by air when you get close enough to the island, and any surface boat that isn't surrounded covered in cannons is asking to get sunk."

"How many times you been down here?" Martin asked, lying down on his back. He had given up on sleep, and the whirring still got to him, but somehow this was the closest thing to comfortable he could achieve.

"Oh… four or five. I come and go enough, but I usually get to hitch rides on the Gotengo."

"The Gotengo?!" Martin's eyes widened. "Who are you, man?"

"Errol Smith, already said." He paused a moment. "Oh, uh… Field Research Specialist, United Nations Special Committee on Kaiju Research. Same as you."

Martin groaned. He was newly pressed into service with the UNSCKR. One close encounter with a massive lizard and he was an asset to global security, or so he was told.

"So, Varan, huh? Only seen him in person once," Smith said. "That shriek he does when he pounces on something, how creepy is that?"

"Yeah, it's intense," Martin muttered. The monster's cry was shrill, but he recalled being far more worried about getting stepped on that day, three weeks prior to being herded onto the submarine.

"Varan's not much of a stomper, from what I've read on him," Smith said. "Likes to bite, swat, what have you."

Martin's brow furled without a thought. This stranger was eerily intuitive.

"Sorry man, not doing that on purpose," Smith said. "So, uh, yeah, I'll get out of your hair. Intercom unit's on the wall. Don't be afraid of asking for the valium, newbies do it all the time."

"Got it," Martin groaned. He started rubbing his temples again. Smith hopped off of his cot.

"I'll let you relax," Smith said as he walked out the door. "The 'E' stands for 'Empath', by the way."

* * *

"Relay Seven should be out of range no more than once a month now. Max time approximately seven minutes, ten seconds. All satellites this far out are unaffected by solar flare activity, we're sure of that by now. Tsuburaya Station reports no debris more than one thousand miles from the asteroid belt. Previous reports of a signal from the outer edge of the solar system are unsubstantiated so far. We'll keep an eye out, but speculation so far is just some basic radiation signature. That's all for now, next report will be at 0500 hours home time. This has been Captain Edwards aboard the Mogera. Over and out."

Captain Gerald Edwards ended his recording and transmitted it. This was, mercifully, yet another uneventful report. Deploying the Mogera, one of the few functional mechas, into space was a controversial decision, one Captain Edwards himself had doubts about. But he was the only person NASA had left with any experience in one of the Kaiju Killers at that point.

"Jerry, chow in five!" A woman called from outside the communications center.

Edwards pushed himself from his seat. The vaunted artificial gravity system programmed into the Mogera kept him from floating to the ceiling, but didn't match the dedicated space stations that had begun to populate the outer orbits of the solar system. So while somebody aboard the mecha wouldn't float through corridors like astronauts in the first few decades of space travel, they could bound across the floors like, as one crew member had put it, Olympic hurdlers in slow motion.

Before Edwards could make it out of the comms room, a central console started to chirp. _Incoming transmission_ , he thought. His last transmission home wouldn't arrive in Houston for hours, so this was something. He returned to his seat and turned on the receiver.

The transmission started as little more than feedback. Slowly, it changed into a steady tone, then a murmur. It grew louder, with words few people would recognize, even fewer would understand. Edwards gripped his seat, and for a moment it felt like there was a brick in his stomach.

" _Stah-varr Kilaak_." The murmur began repeating that phrase. The same message that had been received, on Earth, five years ago. That time, it had preceded bloodshed. " _Stosh-des Ghidorah. Stah-varr Kilaak. Stosh-des Ghidorah._ "

Captain Edwards cut off the receiver, cursed, and raced from the comms center.


	2. Chapter 2

The first twenty-four hours after getting out of the submarine were, as far as Martin cared, the most relieving of his life. The CKR campus was spacious, quiet, and more importantly, not under the damned sea.

When the sub docked, he pleaded to be the first one off. What was on this island, he barely knew and, at the time, truly did not care. It was swelteringly hot outside, but open. He would have stood out in the open for hours if somebody hadn't pulled him along with the other submarine passengers. There were twenty in all, not counting the ship's personnel. Martin had still made little attempt to socialize with any of them, but supposed he'd need to get on that soon.

"Feelin' better?" Errol Smith said, patting him on the back as he walked by. Martin barely had a chance to respond before Smith hurried ahead. He still hadn't explained what an "Empath" was. Somehow, Martin expected it to be… Weird. That was the right word.

There was a tedious orientation session. The island had a few names: Ogasawara, Birth Island, Monster Island. The latter two were nicknames. Somewhere on this land mass, one of the most famous kaiju in the world made her home. Mothra had appeared sometime in the late 1950s, hatching out of a cocoon found after an earthquake. Other kaiju infrequently found their ways to this place.

People designated "witnesses" like him were ones who had survived close encounters with kaiju. That was, unsurprisingly, a preferred trait for UNSCKR staff on this island, which served as the premier research facility for giant monsters in the world. Very few of the witnesses had actively sought out jobs here, but each had been approached after coming close to a kaiju, surviving, and apparently handling themselves admirably. What Martin would be doing with this experience, he did not yet know.

* * *

"So, what did I miss?" Errol Smith asked. He had wasted little time breaking away from the newcomers and heading to the large, grey building in the middle of the campus. He'd met little resistance entering, not even being stopped to display his credentials a second time. The first time came as a result of a zealous new security guard at the front door of the building. He could navigate his way to his destination with his eyes closed: Elevator past the lobby, fourth floor, go right, third door on the right. A plain white placard with raised black letters in four languages casually identified the room as "Behavioral Analysis: Local."

"When did you get in?" Asked a stout man, not bothering to look up from his tablet.

"Only just," Smith replied, already rifling through a stack of papers. "Titanosaurus says 'hi,' by the way."

His office-mate looked up for a second, then went back to his tablet.

"Any idea where Pari is?" Smith asked. "She hasn't picked up her phone since I got off the boat."

"Why don't you just think really loud at her?" Tablet-man responded. "The snake thing showed up here yesterday morning. She's out looking at him."

"Snake thing? As in Manda?" Smith asked. "When I asked what I missed, you couldn't have led off with that?"

The colleague waved him off. Smith was constantly coming and going from the Monster Island facility, he return wasn't a cause for excitement. But there was always at least one person here who he could count on for a warm welcome. He was hoping Dr. Pari Chandakar would be in the office when he returned. The only likely alternative was the field. They had bonded quickly over their love of exploring the wilderness across the island. And when she wasn't buried in paperwork, she would be out there somewhere. If Manda had appeared on the island, it was a sure thing that she'd have set out to locate him.

The two had been brand new to the CKR staff when they had their first monster encounter on the island. Mothra made her nest miles away, but others always came, and they could appear anywhere. They had been especially fortunate that day, years earlier. Nobody had seen Godzilla in a year, but there he was, emerging from the sea, making his way inland. A small research team, including two fresh-faced team members named Errol Smith and Pari Chandakar, were able to follow him closely, and atypically, without incident. The so-called King of the Monsters didn't take well to being followed. But one person on this research team could insist that he had another purpose then to harass humans, and the others were instructed to take his word. And another said he was there to rest, and to meet with the island's permanent resident. And at the time her idea was met with skepticism. Godzilla was, more than any other kaiju, willing to fight. He had no specific home that anyone had record of, just a range, albeit one he was willing to leave at times. He had gone off to challenge other monsters plenty of times, seemingly needing to assert his dominance, and more than once Mothra had appeared, interrupting one of his fights before he could destroy his inevitably overmatched opponent. So his first recorded appearance on Ogasawara Island was expected to result in violence. But when Pari said she did not think he was there to attack, Errol believed her. And when she was correct, and people who had been documenting Godzilla's behavior for decades began heaping praise upon her and taking her analysis as gospel, she made sure that one colleague who had listened from the start was appreciated. And it was one of his favorite things about this job. The one that let him travel the world, interact with monsters, occasionally ride a multi-billion dollar war machine. So when he was returning to the island from an expedition, he thought about her before anything else.

* * *

Manda rested when he first arrived on the island. He had heard the call only a day earlier, and was not, especially on land, the fastest creature. In water he had an advantage, but he was also pushing himself. The urge to come to this place came rarely, and this was the strongest it had ever been. So the serpent raced from the cavern in central China he resided in. He crawled across the land as quickly as his awkward legs would take him, and rocketed through the water when he hit the ocean. And even for a creature like him, it was strenuous.

When the great serpent woke up, he immediately began moving to the mountain in the interior of the island. It was as large as any the serpent had explored, but the mesa on the top, instead of a craggy peak, was rare on a mountain this high. Manda had made this journey enough times, across the river that zig-zagged across the island, and to the mountain itself.

Mothra's wings flitted as she sensed Manda climbing her mountain. The sun was beating down on a rare cloudless day, and she was taking it in contentedly, waiting for her visitor. As soon as the serpent appeared, she perked up. Manda placed his front legs on the mesa, and began to pull the rest of his long body up. He coiled when finished, and laid his down in front of the great insect. Mothra's wings flitted again, but she crawled forward instead of using them. She lowered her head, and began to chirp. Her antennae started to vibrate, and Manda closed his eyes. The two remained that way for several hours, and when they it ended, and Manda opened his eyes again, he began to hiss. Mothra started flapping her wings and chirping louder. She rose into the air, and the chirping grew louder. Manda popped from his coil, raced down the mountain, and down to the water, his hissing never stopping.

When he swam away, Mothra landed. That was one creature she could rely on. Manda was one of the most willing to answer when she called, no matter how far away he was. There were only a few like that, and she immediately began focusing on the next. The great insect settled her wings, and began focusing the flashes of horror that had come to her days ago. Images of other monsters raced through her mind, until she settled on one she trusted. He was stronger and smarter than Manda, but Mothra still couldn't transmit everything she knew from such a distance. So once again, she called. It wasn't as loud a mental cry as the one she had sent to the serpent, but the urgency was there. And when her message was sent, she slept.

Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, the call was heard. Sitting in a clearing, near Okinawa, Japan, King Caesar roared, and began to run.


	3. Chapter 3

Captain Edwards played the message again. There had been very little direct communication between the people of Earth and the alien race they had called "Kilaak" five years ago. The name may not have even been correct, but linguists insisted it made the most sense. This was the same sequence of words they had received before. "Stah-varr Kilaak, stosh-des Ghidorah."

"Ghidorah" was the name of the creature they had brought with them. Of that much they were certain. Whenever his name was invoked, the beast attacked. Golden scales, wings, two tails, three heads that spat some kind of electro-magnetic beam. It was something that belonged in Renaissance depictions of Hell. The beast stood, from head to toe, higher even than Godzilla. And it had taken that monster, alongside Mothra, Rodan, King Caesar, and Anguirus, with help from a massive military force, just to drive it and the Kilaak armada away.

"So, are you coming back?" He muttered to himself. The crew of the Mogera had spent the hour after receiving the transmission frantically sending messages back to Earth, to the Tsuburaya station, to any other spacecraft. No other spacecraft could defend itself like the massive mecha. The Mogera itself was actually repurposed from the first Kilaak invasion. It had been a weaker vessel, presumably more a scout than a battleship. The creatures inside were the same as the invaders, but the controls different from any found in another downed Kilaak ship.

It had been theorized that the Mogera was taken from some other race the Kilaaks had dominated. There was no evidence of what these theoretical other aliens looked like when the ship was studied, reverse-engineered, and eventually retrofitted for human use. Some cheeky idiot or another in NASA had taken to calling them Mysterians.

Today, Mogera was a reliable exploration vessel. It was larger, faster, and more versatile than any other vehicle on the planet. Its weapons system was based on the stronger, stockier Kiryu, though it couldn't take quite that mecha's level of punishment. The crew was waiting on a response from Earth, which would probably not arrive for another few hours. Captain Edwards didn't look forward to the answer, but he anticipated one thing: Stay in the outer reaches of the solar system. Watch for more signs of invasion. And if the Kilaaks appeared, be the first line of defense. Edwards did not expect to return to Earth alive.

* * *

Humans would call the creature an Oodako, a giant octopus. They were common enough in the Pacific Ocean. They also made fine prey for creatures that rarely actually needed to hunt.

One scuttled near the ocean floor. Its speed provided an advantage, but its hunter was not known to relent. The Oodako eventually settled on the floor, then coiled its legs and sprang upward. Its pursuer swam up, but was still behind it.

Godzilla did not bother raising his head out of the water. In the middle of the sea, he rarely did. The sails that lined his back breached the surface, and that was enough. They surged forward, and the Oodako fled again. Occasionally it would attempt to shift directions, and Godzilla would match it. In time, it swam into the bay of a small island. Godzilla finally raised his head from the water, and slowly reared up onto his legs, the water shallow enough that his waist up was above the surface. The tower lizard roared, and advanced on the octopus. When he got close enough, he leaned forward and swiped first one with one hand, then the other, batting his quarry but barely damaging it. What mattered was that the Oodako was moving closer to the shore. Godzilla threw back his head and roared again.

As the Oodako crept onto the beach, another set of sails appeared on the water. The sails were smaller, and more jagged. They raced past Godzilla, and then vanished under the water. In an instant, the bay seemed to explode. The smaller creature leapt from the water and pounced on the Oodako. Godzilla watched as the two wrestled. The octopus wrapped the new creature in its legs, but they were fought off. The smaller one roared and began to drag the octopus further onto the shore. Its sails began to glow, and from its mouth a stream of blue flame shot forth. The Oodako shrunk back, injured but alive. Godzilla grunted, and his accomplice's sails glowed again. Only the smallest flame came this time, and when the monster tried one more time, he produced a massive ring of smoke. It surrounded the Oodako, which was too weak to try and retreat back into the water.

Godzilla stepped forward, and the creature that followed him, one that people called Zilla, growled at him. Godzilla stopped, and let his accomplice advance on the wounded octopus. Zilla let out a sharp bark, and prepared to pounce. It was at the moment the vision came.

Godzilla shook his head and roared again at the images that poured into his mind. Zilla had collapsed to the ground, shrieking. The smaller creature was in the range of the call, but it wasn't meant for him. Visions of an island, and a mountain raced through both of their heads. Then there was the familiar sight of the giant moth. Finally, one last image. The three-headed, golden-scaled dragon descending from the sky. Firing the lightning that came from its mouth, scorching the earth around it. Godzilla began slashing his tail and roaring even louder at the image of an old rival. There was one more image of Mothra, and then the two monsters were back in the bay. The Oodako was weak, but slowly working its way into the water. Zilla recovered and lunged. The octopus flailed, and its leg struck the smaller monster in the face. Godzilla advanced, leaned forward, and lifted the octopus into the air. It continued to struggle, but the great lizard opened his mouth and bit down on its head. In seconds, the Oodako stopped wriggling. Zilla barked, and Godzilla tore free one of the octopus's legs and tossed it to him.

He didn't hear the call again, but the image of the dragon didn't leave his mind. When they were finished with their meal, Zilla jumped back into the water and began to head to the open see. He turned around to look to his companion. Godzilla growled, and walked onto the shore. Zilla held up for a moment, waiting for the larger monster to join him. Eventually he relented, and began to swim out to find the source of the images he had accidentally intercepted. Godzilla didn't look back, but continued inland, uninterested in the call.


	4. Chapter 4

"Possible name number fifteen… Slugra?"

"It's not a slug. It's a caterpillar."

"Those are butterflies!"

Pari Chandakar closed her eyes as tight as she could, and took a deep breath. She counted to ten, opened her eyes, and hit "Record" again.

"Gender is indeterminate," she spoke into her tablet. "Granted we know little about how kaiju reproduce. Assumption remains asexually, but conventionally the elder of this species has been referred to as female. No sign of other members of a species, so if Mothra laid the egg the larvae hatched from, she was presumably also able to fertilize it herself as well."

"Thra! We call it Thra, just like we do with that baby Godzilla!"

"I told you, its name is Minilla!"

Pari stopped recording again. There really wasn't much left to document about the larvae at this point. It explored the island under the slightest supervision from Mothra, but had no noteworthy habits. At the very least, it seemed tolerant of people. And stayed away from the above-ground portion of campus. This was her way of justifying to her superiors remaining in the field after Manda left.

The larvae shifted its head slightly, giving the slightest acknowledgment to the people observing it. Pari waved, and members of her team hollered. The larvae, a rare example of a baby kaiju, let out something like a chirp, and went back along some arbitrary path.

This was, in the grand scheme of things, a rare occurrence. Off of Ogasawara, kaiju were deadly. They were massive, territorial, often feral. The ones that were most prone to coming to the island were the least likely to proactively harm people, but there wasn't one that didn't have the potential to cause devastation. A close encounter tended to leave people injured or traumatized. Here, the right word for them wouldn't be docile, but they seemed calm. None attempted to fight Mothra, even when she had battled them in the past. And if they knew there were humans present, they clearly didn't care. This island was special to them, somehow. It wasn't an easy idea to describe in any way that was professional or academic. Just a little theory of Pari's, but one she thought about every time another monster appeared on the island.

"Dr. Chakandar," a freckled woman approached, holding a radio. "Somebody's calling for you."

Somebody calling in the field. The thought made Pari's stomach drop. The UNSCKR was not devoid of bureaucracy, and one of the perks of leaving the campus was time away from the paper-pushing types that, while generally benign, could at least bog down her work back in the office. Constant questions, paperwork, "consultation" from people without her experience. Frequent distractions, like the buzzing of mosquitos. And yet her preferred alternative tended to be full of the literal buzzing of mosquitos. She took the radio, not looking forward to whatever lecture about use of Committee resources she was inevitably about to receive.

"This is Chakandar, hello?"

"Missed you too, Pixie," came a familiar voice. Pari's dread gave way first to relief, than elation, which she was going to have to try very hard not to show it.

"Errol? When did you get back?" she asked.

"I've been off the boat for a few hours," Errol Smith's voice buzzed in from the radio. "You know, I was so excited to pop into the office and see you, and what do they tell me when I get here?"

"Bloody whiner," Pari laughed. "Are you just calling to drag me back to base?"

"Uh…" There was a moment of awkward silence. "I took some really pretty pictures while I was away. Titanosaurus has gorgeous eyes, did you know that?"

This was about the only conversation that could make returning to base bearable. When they had signed off, Pari packed up her equipment, and began to shoo her staff to their vehicles.

* * *

The saucer appeared first. It flashed on deep radar, then buzzed close enough to the Moguera that the crew got a clear visual. The presence of the mecha seemed not to phase the vessel. It sped on, and the Moguera followed. The saucer was significantly faster, but the Moguera was at least able to keep track of it. The mysterious vessel frequently shifted directions, avoiding the gravitational pulls of the moons and planets on the outer edge of the solar system.

Captain Edwards recorded a quick message about the saucer to warn Earth and the Tsuburaya Station. He had made the decision already, the Moguera was going to trail the ship, and engage it if necessary. Keeping up was difficult. The saucer was large, but it flew faster than any ship Edwards had ever observed. But there was an operational space station with hundreds of people aboard between them and Earth, and the planet itself to consider. So the Moguera crew tried to keep up. But within a few hours, it began to slow.

"Are the fuel lines blocked?" Edwards asked. He ordered diagnostic analysis, and focused again on the erratic course being followed by the saucer. The Moguera had been under human control for years now, but it still originated as alien engineering, and there were always things about it that made very little sense to him. A loss of velocity was likely another design quirk, and a nuisance compared to a Kilaak incursion.

"Captain!" a crew member called into the bridge. "Fuel lines are clear, but you need to bring up exterior hull cameras now!"

Edwards cursed, then complied. What he saw made him curse again. The Moguera's secondary thrusters, attached to its legs, weren't firing. And as he tried to zoom in on one, the picture cut out. The other still gave a grainy image, one that showed sludge spreading over the mecha's hull. The secondary thrusters were no longer firing at all, which explained the loss of speed.

"Do we know what the hell that is?" he asked. He began pulling up the camera feeds around other parts of the hull, and sure enough, the sludge was appearing across most of them. It hadn't reached the mecha's primary thrusters yet, but if it did, they would be floating dead in space. Edwards turned to the Moguera's command console, and ran over a panel of blue buttons. He held one down, and punched in a series of commands on the main keyboard. The mecha began to vibrate violently, and on the exterior, arcs of electricity criss-crossed the hull.

The expanding substance broke off, and seemed to float away. Pieces of it started attaching to each other, until everything that had been loosed from the Moguera reconstituted into a large ball. The Moguera's thrusters sputtered as they slowly returned to life. And the ball of sludge started to move, its shape changed.

Captain Edwards and members of the Moguera crew monitored the object from the mecha's bridge. They saw it reconstitute, move, and slowly form into something clearly that was clearly, horrifyingly alive. Stumps extended into arms and legs, and near the top, two orbs appeared. Eyes. It had massive, unblinking eyes. And when it had taken its shape, it advanced on the Moguera. Edwards ordered his crew to battle stations, and when he looked back at the monitor, it was dominated by one of the creature's massive, horrible eyes.


	5. Chapter 5

King Caesar sat cross-legged on the mesa, waiting for Mothra to communicate. The golden fur-covered giant locked his eyes on the insect, but she stared vacantly, only occasionally stirring her antennae. Caesar was occasionally distracted by chirping sounds Mothra's larvae let out at the base of the mountain, the smaller creature desperately wanting its mother to pay attention to it.

Mothra shook, and finally started to chirp at her visitor. Caesar cocked his head, but remained quiet. Mothra crawled forward, and then flapped her wings. The air shimmered. Dust flew from Mothra's wings, forming a cloud which enveloped the other monster. Caesar closed his eyes, and breathed the dust in. Mothra settled, and began to flash an image into Caesar's head.

Caesar could see a black sky first, as dark as any night he'd ever experienced. A few stars provided the only illumination. What was more, he felt himself flying through it. The sky became slightly brighter, and a massive red orb came into view. But he flew passed it. The speed was dizzying. A mass of metal came into focus. It spun and listed in the black sky, falling towards the red orb. Caesar's attention was shifted, not by his choice, to a dark object flying in the other direction. He tried to pursue it, but somehow it moved even faster than he. He fired one futile bolt of energy from his antennae and…

Caesar briefly snapped back into reality. Mothra was still in front of him on the mesa. The larvae was no longer chirping below them, but he could hear a shrill roar in the distance. Mothra flitted her wings, and Caesar was in the other place again.

The mass of metal was sinking closer to the red orb, and another was approaching. He turned towards it, flapping his wings. Wings that resembled Mothra's, but darker. The new object was twirling as it flew, with blue arcs of energy criss-crossing its exterior. As it approached, something broke away from it and formed into a large, grey creature. Caesar, or whatever he was seeing this through, reacted immediately. He charged, ramming the creature head first. His new enemy shuddered, and gave way. Caesar/his flying avatar passed slowly through. The creature was like living sludge. When he came out the other side, its massive eyes emerged from its back, as if they had passed through its body. Caesar felt his strange new wings flapping harder, backing away, and then he unleashed another beam.

* * *

"I don't know what the hell we're seeing and I don't care. All weapon systems at the ready now!" Captain Edwards roared. The thing attacking the Moguera had been dislodged, and then it had come to life. Of course, this far out, it would be a damned giant monster. And of course, another one appeared on the Moguera's sensors almost immediately after. He pulled up the mecha's primary camera, but it was too far away to get a good view. The Moguera's lights were only so powerful out here, but an outline was visible.

"The hell…" Edwards muttered. "Is that Mothra?"

The new creature fire a beam of bright red energy at their attacker. That was enough for Captain Edwards. There was an enemy, and an enemy of an enemy. The old adage made it their friend, at least for the time being.

The Moguera began to glow. It righted itself to face the living sludge that attacked it, and its massive limbs unfolded from its body. The mecha's drill-shaped arms pointed, then began to spin. The sludge monster barely registered it, focusing on the winged assailant on its other side. Moguera fired three beams of energy simultaneously, one from each arm, one from its face. The sludge monster shook, and as it tried to turn around, the winged monster blasted it from the other side. Moguera closed in, its arms continuing to spin.

The mecha and the winged beast closed in on the sludge monster. It made occasional attempts to swipe out at one or the other, but neither was close enough. From the blackness of space, yet another object appeared.

The winged creature, the dark Mothra thing, noticed it first. Even out here, she could normally sense new things long before she saw them. This one appeared only moments after she felt it coming, and it distracted her long enough for her enemy to break away from the pincher attack it had been stuck in.

The crew of the Moguera picked up something new only seconds before it hit them. It tackled them first, ending the attack on the sludge monster. Then it turned, and from a bright red spot above its single eye, it fired a powerful beam. Moguera raised its arms, taking the brunt of the attack. The beam moved across the mecha's body, leaving massive scorch marks across its chest. It stopped, then fired again, moving across Moguera's body in the opposite direct. The mecha aimed a drill arm, but its own beam was met by the new monster's, and it exploded.

Inside the mecha, crew members scrambled to close blast doors and cut off power to the damaged limb. Captain Edwards ordered an evacuation from the lower chambers of the Moguera, and initiated a retreat.

* * *

King Caesar shook his head and roared. Mothra shook her head and chirped. The vision took him again. Two creatures now. One massive, greyish, barely solid. The other had one eye, a beak, small wings on its back, jagged points across its belly, and those arms. They were large, cruel, and sickle-shaped. The two monsters flew from the battle, not in a retreat, but rather in a hurry. The monster Caesar was channeling initially turned to follow them, but then looked back at its metal ally. Through it, Caesar could sense something. No, things. Life forces. Small ones, like the people he protected on Earth. Caesar growled, and either by his will or its own volition, it was hard to differentiate, the winged monster approached the mecha and grabbed it with its legs, turning again to carry it to Earth.


	6. Chapter 6

It was not that long ago that Martin Sanchez could say he'd never seen a giant monster up close. The Pacific Northwest was not a common location for kaiju, and as a result, its population had doubled over the last decade. Enough of the creatures had found homes in other parts of the country. Baragon roamed around the southwest, digging holes. The Gulf Coast and the southern Atlantic coast were littered with sea monsters. And New York City wasn't the magnet for trouble Tokyo was, but it had dealt with a few of them. The junior Godzilla alone had done billions in property damage years earlier.

It was only a few months ago that a triphibious lizard called Varan was first sighted in Oregon. It popped up here and there, usually seen from a distance. And then came the day it appeared in Washington, gliding into the forest surrounding Mt. Rainier. Martin was a park ranger, guiding a sixth-grade class through a field trip. And when the monster appeared, he had led the evacuation of them, and dozens of tourists.

Errol was right about the screech that thing made. It was like a dying hawk crying into a megaphone. It would pounce somewhere, knock over a bus or a cabin, and let out its cry. Every time, it seemed like it was getting louder. Martin remembered feeling like every scream was the monster telling him it was coming for him. It was a fear that drove him that day, trying to both stave off the paranoia and protect the people around him. All he had done was drive them. He'd shout to run, people, mostly children, ran. Somebody would fall, he would pick them up. It was simple. It was basic. But somehow it meant he was a hero for a day.

And for that, he was suddenly on an island in the south Pacific, surrounded by weirdos and, apparently, even more monsters. That's what he was here for. He was a "witness", somebody who'd seen a kaiju up close and supposedly kept his cool to the point where he would be useful in a place where they did nothing but study the damned things.

So far, it seemed to add up to being a park ranger again. He had a fair amount of new terrain to learn, and the fauna was definitely not what he was used to…

On the first day, Martin learned that Ogasawara was both the name of an island chain south of Japan, and the largest island in that chain. He also learned it had two nicknames: Monster Island and Birth Island. The former because kaiju were known to come and go regularly. The latter because, when it was first taken over by the United Nations, it was the home of a giant egg, one which eventually hatched into the massive brown caterpillar doted on by Mothra.

Mothra herself was what drew other monsters to the island. From the highest point on Monster Island, she met with other monsters as if she had invited them. Martin felt uneasy the first time he flipped through a report and found details of Varan's visits. That nagging feeling that the monster was following him came back when he saw pictures of it gliding over Monster Island's beaches.

He had been on the island a week when he saw a monster make landfall for the first time. Zilla was nearly as large as Varan, but more lithe. Where Varan had crawled on all fours when on the ground, Zilla lumbered on two, leaning forward while his tail balanced him in the back. Martin was taken along on an observation team to document the monster's visit. They never got close, and it was never apparent that Zilla noticed them. If he did, he didn't seem to care.

Zilla didn't hunt, like Varan did. He didn't have that look of hate in his eyes. He just ran. And when the observation team caught up with him, he was… playing. He had pulled a large tree from the ground, and Mothra's larval offspring was pulling on it, connected through a long strand of silken webbing. Zilla shook, and pulled back, letting out some desperate copy of Godzilla's roar, eventually succeeding not in freeing the tree from the other monster's grasp, but in lifting it off the ground and flinging it around.

It was a wholly different experience. Martin grew up seeing stories about kaiju rampages on the news, but it took him twenty-three years to see one up close. And weeks later, he was watching others. And whatever he'd been roped into meant he'd be seeing monsters up close on a fairly regular basis.

Zilla pressed on after a time, bored of his game with the larva, which still followed him. The two young monsters approached Mothra's mountain, and the great insect appeared at the edge of the plateau.

Martin had been following them in a green jeep. When Zilla stopped at the mountain, he parked, and one of his passengers pulled out a video camera.

"Everyone's been showing up, man," the cameraman muttered. "Manda, Caesar, now the baby Godzilla. Think his dad's gonna show up?"

"Is it really his son?" Martin asked. Zilla's origins were as mysterious as any other monster's. The basic physical resemblance, and the monster's insistence upon following the more notorious Godzilla had led to no end of speculation on how they were connected. This particular researcher shook his head at the question, instead positing that Zilla was, somehow, Godzilla's nephew.

The discussion, such as it was, was cut short when Zilla roared, and Mothra appeared at the edge of her plateau. The larva cautiously backed away, and Zilla roared again. Mothra cocked her head, glaring at the juvenile. Zilla let out a low rumble, and lowered his head.

"He isn't the one she wanted to see," the cameraman said. He trained his camera on Zilla's head. The monster had stopped looking up the mountain. Mothra chirped, and Zilla turned around.

"Back in the truck," Martin called. "That thing's heading our way!"

The field team flocked back into the jeep, and Martin gunned the engine. Zilla stomped by, shaking the vehicle as one of his feet came down ten feet away. The monster stopped, and briefly seemed aware of the humans below him. He looked down, huffed, and stomped away.

"The hell was that about?"

Martin shook his head. Questioning the monster's apathy was looking a gift horse in the mouth, and he had no interest in it.

 _"Car 4, you may want to return to the campus,"_ the radio buzzed. _"We've got incoming."_

* * *

Errol's phone buzzed with an alert to return to his office.

"Why did you get one and I di-" Pari stopped talking and pulled her phone from her pocket. "Okay, I had it on silent, fair. What's going on?"

"The Moguera's on its way here," Errol said, skimming over the message. "Got some new monster with it. Because we were on a shortage, now we're carting them in from outer space. Right now, instead of two hours from now, when it would be convenient."

Errol sighed, looking at the bottle of chilled wine and the bowl of fruit he'd procured.

"Murphy's Law," Pari laughed, popping a melon ball into her mouth. "It was either this or one of us broke out in hives."

Errol shook his head, and sighed again. This was far from the reunion he was planning.

"They're going to need you out there," Pari said. She grabbed his arm with one hand, and put the other on his cheek. "Nobody else makes heads or tails of these things like you."

The sound of the Moguera's engines filled the room, and made the windows shake. Errol looked outside and watched it make for the massive landing pad normally reserved for the Kiryu. The creature following it circled above.

"What is that thing?" Pari asked. "It looks like Mothra's evil twin."

"It's…" Errol started to think, and trailed off. A word flooded his mind, repeating its two syllables in rhythm to the beating of the monster's wings. "It's called Battra. And I don't think it showing up is a good sign."


	7. Chapter 7

"Hey, newbie!"

Martin was not ashamed to admit he'd been gawking. Kaiju were incredible, but mechas were something to behold. The Moguera, as banged up as it was, was still a marvel of engineering, something that looked like a giant steel animal but could transport dozens of people across the solar system.

"Newbie! You're going to see that thing so often if you're working here, okay?" Errol Smith appeared, a satchel across his shoulder, with a shorter, dark-skinned woman following. "Now look alive, we need a lift."

Not long after returning to the campus, Martin was off again, taking the wheel in another truck with Errol and his friend. The jungles on Ogasawara Island were full of worn paths, and UN researchers had mapped out dozens of safe routes across the island over the years. In that respect, it was like being back in Washington. But then, it was hotter here. And stickier. And he had been trained to look out for the occasional bear or moose, not giant monster.

Today, he was going, yet again, to see one of them. His chatty acquaintance seemed to know where to go better than he did, making it a wonder, albeit one he was determined not to speak, that it was necessary for him to drive them.

"No license," Errol said.

"Huh?"

"No driver's license, sorry," he corrected himself. "It's why I can't take myself. And I just don't make her drive."

"He's quite the gentleman like that," Pari muttered, mostly intent on jotting something in a notebook.

The man was going to make Martin's head hurt. His intuition was getting more than a little unnerving.

"Remember what the 'E' on my nametag stood for?" Errol asked. Martin nodded. "Do you know what that means? 'Empath'?"

"Honestly, man, I have no idea," Martin said.

"It means I can know things," Errol said. "Things people aren't really _supposed_ to know, I just don't always have a choice."

"He means he can read your thoughts," Pari added, still buried in her notebook. "He can naturally pick up on the thoughts of others, human, animal, anything. It's why he has a job here."

"You're…"

"I am not shitting you in the slightest, sorry," Errol interjected. "You're on an island monster hub, dude. This can't be the weirdest thing you've ever heard of."

"You're doing it again," Pari said.

And so that first portion of the trip went.

His young companion having taken off, as he sometimes did, Godzilla was free to roam further from his territory than usual. Zilla preferred warmer waters almost to a fault, something Godzilla had grown out of years ago. So he had gone north, and made landfall in a wooded area devoid of humans. It was an area he he'd been to a few times before, and was generally unpopulated by anything that would trouble him. But not by things worthy of his notice.

After a moment, Godzilla leaned back his head and roared. The high-pitched, modulating cry was his custom entering what he knew to be another monster's territory. It could mean a few things: Either another monster was being warned to avoid him as he passed through, or was being challenged, or, rarely, it was an invitation to socialize. This was that unusual case of the latter. Normally his cry here was met by a shrill chirp, and a winged giant flying into view. Rodan was occasionally known to roam, he'd only claimed this area in the last decade as it was, so it wasn't so unusual that he didn't appear.

A smell stuck out to Godzilla first. A smell, and then a column of smoke. Godzilla approached, and found an area where the woods had been charred and smashed. The smell was stronger here, but there was still more for him to find, he knew. So he walked on, trampling trees and scaring away animals so small they barely registered to the dark green behemoth. More scenes of destruction, less the signs of a giant monster living in the area, than evidence of conflict. Godzilla raised his tail, then thumped it on the ground, and roared again. Still nothing. He wandered on, his curiosity piqued. And then there was the scream.

Godzilla looked up, and finally saw Rodan. The winged monster cried again, and zoomed past him. The sonic boom came seconds later, staggering Godzilla. Rodan flew on, and twisted in midair. He flapped his wings, lifting himself higher in the air, and flew back towards Godzilla.

The second monster was not as fast, or as graceful. It dropped out of the air, held stable by small wings on its back. It snarled through a hooked beak, and spread its arms. Each curved past the elbow into a cruel, scythe-like blade.

Rodan landed next to Godzilla. Out of the air, he looked haggard. Blood trickled from one of his eyes, and there were marks all over his armored chest. His wings were singed in various places, not that it seemed to have affected his flight. The winged monster screamed at its assailant, but backed up cautiously. Godzilla took the hint, and began to approach the new creature. It banged its sickle-shaped arms together, screeched and charged. Godzilla raised his hands and crouched slightly. The new monster lunged and tried to swing its arms, but Godzilla caught them. The scythes were sharp, and dug into his hands, but Godzilla held on. He yanked the attacker towards him and headbutted it.

An image flashed in Godzilla's head. This new monster, flying through the dark night sky, alongside several others. Behind him, Rodan squawked and shook his wings. The new monster took advantage of the distraction and wriggled free.

Godzilla, regaining his composure, braced himself for another lunge. Instead, he was assaulted from a distance, his enemy firing a thing, but painful beam of heat from a red dot on its forehead. The attack left a singe on Godzilla's chest that stung badly. Godzilla roared, and the sails along his back began to glow. Rodan hopped back again, then flapped his wings and took to the sky. Godzilla unleashed his atomic breath, and knocked the new monster off of its feet.

Rodan circled overhead, looking for an opening to swoop in and attack. The monster that had attacked him was still on the ground, and Godzilla was repeatedly blasting it. When, finally, one missed, and Godzilla paused to catch his breath, the monster sprung up, and fired the ray from its head one more time. It caught Godzilla in the face, causing him to cry out and stagger. The wings on the monster's back began to beat furiously and it leapt into the air. Rodan dove, trying to tackle it, but it spun away. A blue flame shot past the massive pterosaur, followed by Godzilla's distinctive roar. It clipped their enemy's foot, but it didn't slow down. Rodan flapped his wings again, but the monster had picked up speed, moving straight into the air, and he could not muster the speed pursue it.

Frustrated and exhausted, Rodan landed near Godzilla, splayed out on his feet, knees, and the clawed joints in the middle of his wings. He looked up at Godzilla, then to the sky where his assailant had fled, then collapsed.


	8. Chapter 8

**Hey all, obviously this has been idle for a while. I have a bit more free time now, so it'll be coming back, with at least one update a week.**

 **Cheers,**  
 **-Le Author**

* * *

The two sat facing each other for hours, doing little more to observers that letting out the occasional chirp. Battra chirped in the same patterns as Mothra, but her cry was harsher.

Martin had arrived with his two passengers an hour after Battra landed. The giant larva was crawling around nearby, occasionally approaching the cliff leading to its mother, but it would turn sharply away whenever one of the winged behemoths made a noise. Zilla was still nearby, but he had curled up and fallen asleep.

"I suppose you're not hearing them, are you?" Pari asked. Martin turned around to face her, but realized she was speaking to Errol.

"Bits and pieces," Errol responded. "This Battra thing is a full-on psychic, just like her. Whatever they're doing, I can barely keep up with it."

"Should we be worried about the baby monsters?" Martin asked. "They're just, they're both right here, you know?"

"Zilla's asleep," Errol said. "And Leo loves me."

"His name is Leo?"

"Yeah, but nobody listens to me when I tell them that," Errol chuckled. Pari shook her head, and started rifling through a backpack on the floor of the jeep. As she pulled out a camera and started taking pictures, Errol explained how he had named the giant larva. It had hatched only days after his arrival on Monster Island. And, apparently of utmost importance, it had been in August. The chatty, vaguely telepathic man couldn't stand for it just being "Giant Larva" or "Baby Mothra". So, while nobody else adopted the name, it was "Leo" to him, and he insisted that the creature preferred that.

"Not getting any good shots down here," Pari said, ignoring Errol's story. "I suppose they'll take issue if we try to climb up there?"

The idea was quickly dismissed. Martin was handed her camera, and instructed to find a tree he could climb to get a better view of the two giant insects. It gave him a fine excuse to get away from Errol and his incessant chattering. More importantly, if Zilla woke up, he could be far away from it. He found one that seemed reasonably tall, and worked his way up. Climbing was nothing new for him, and he told himself on the way up that he was essentially getting paid to do something his mother had yelled at him for as a child. It was a thought that distracted him as he climbed as high up as possible.

The trees were bigger on Monster Island, which seemed appropriate. Martin repeatedly reminded himself not to look down as he shimmied his way across a strong-looking branch. Mothra and Battra were a bit clearer from this vantage. Martin adjusted himself on the branch, keeping himself reasonably steady as he freed a hand to point the camera.

Mothra was crouched nearly flat on the mesa. Battra, the dark newcomer, had her head lifted up. The horn protruding from her forehead glowed orange like it was full of burning embers. But the two monsters still barely moved. According to the two on the ground, this meant they were deep in some kind of psychic conversation. Suspension of disbelief was increasingly necessary, Martin had reasoned, but the idea that the two giant insects in front of him, one of whom apparently had been in outer space until recently, were also telepathic, it just seemed like too much.

"You'll see little here."

Martin yelped, and lost his balance on the branch. He teetered over, losing his grip on the camera, and he could only watch as it banged off of another branch, then plummeted to the ground. When it hit, he became aware that he was looking straight down, but not supporting himself. His legs were barely resting on the branch he'd been sitting on.

"Just leave them to their business, whatever you need to know, you'll be told soon enough."

The voice was high pitched and distinctly feminine. And it had an odd echo, like two people were talking at once. Under something decidedly beyond his own power, Martin found himself being replaced on the branch. He immediately grabbed onto it, unwilling to push his luck again.

"H-hello?" Martin stammered.

"You are secure? We are glad." The voice didn't sound like it came from anywhere in particular. It was just… Close.

"Uh… Yeah, thanks," he said. "If you don't mind, I think I'm going to get down now."

"Understood. Let us help you."

And then they appeared. Two glowing lights fluttered into view in front of Martin. The lights dimmed, and standing on the branch were two women, each only a few inches high. Martin yelped, and tried to back up. In a synchronized motion, the two tiny women raised their right arms, and Martin felt a force around his body. Moments later, he was on the ground, safe and sound, if incredibly confused.

"Allow them their privacy," came the twin voices. "Battra does not come to the Earth unless there is grave danger. We will speak to you again when Mothra has been told all that she must know."

The twins fluttered by again, and once again started to glow. Then, like that, they were gone. Martin sat down, looking at the remains of the camera he had dropped, suddenly wondering when the last time he'd suffered a severe head injury may have been.


End file.
